Big-data company Alteryx Inc. is trying to increase its relevance at a time when its stock has come under significant pressure, introducing new artificial intelligence innovations today that include what it says is the industry’s first deployment-agnostic AI studio designed for no-code users.

Uniquely, Alteryx’s AI studio leverages generative AI to aid nonskilled workers in the creation of new generative AI-powered applications. The idea is that companies can use it to funnel their own, proprietary data into existing large language models and fine-tune them to fulfill more specific tasks.

The Alteryx AI Studio is a part of the company’s Alteryx AiDIN platform, which debuted in May and combines Alteryx’s analytics capabilities with and LLMs. It uses generative AI to help companies better visualize and understand the trends and insights hidden within their data. With the studio, companies can go further and leverage those insights to build new applications that will smooth their business operations and processes, Alteryx said.

Teams can select the LLM of their choice from a list of popular options and then fine-tune it with custom business data, adapting it for different applications within the context of its business. It integrates with Alteryx Designer, making it possible to integrate these newly fine-tuned LLMs into existing workflows. Users can, in effect, create new applications to improve their productivity through a conversational interface, Alteryx said.

The company also said AI Studio makes every effort to safeguard proprietary data, for instance by providing the option for customers to host and manage their LLMs within their own data center environments.

It’s a promising innovation that comes at a time when Alteryx definitely needs to show customers why its platform remains the best choice for their data operations. The company has struggled over the last year, with its revenue growth slowing to a crawl. In its most recent quarter, its second quarter revenue grew by just 4% from a year earlier.

Alteryx has faced difficulties in trying to win new customers, and its stock is down more than 50% in the last 12 months. There has been speculation that Alteryx is even considering selling itself to private equity firms so it can buy the time it needs to reorganize itself, though nothing concrete has emerged so far.

One of the reasons Alteryx is struggling is that it’s coming under immense pressure from rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. It sells tools for extract, transform and load operations, or ETL. Its software is used to prepare massive volumes of data for analysis, with features that include data cleansing, data mining and geospatial analytics.

Recognizing that some enterprises are cutting back on data-related spending, Alteryx recently underwent a workforce restructuring plan, laying off about 300 workers from an employee base that numbered 2,900 at the start of the year.

Today’s announcement shows that Alteryx is simultaneously trying to capitalize on the growing interest in generative AI, which has emerged as the hottest technology this year. Generative AI applications can boost worker productivity in many areas, but to make the technology as effective as possible, the underlying LLMs can be fine-tuned on an organization’s proprietary data, so it has more specific domain expertise. This is where Alteryx believes it can make its impact felt.

Doug Henschen of Constellation Research Inc. said Alteryx is being quite aggressive when it comes to generative AI. “It has to do so, because generative AI technology is moving the bar quickly on data preparation and low-code application development,” the analyst said. “Alteryx is also facing stiff competition from data analytics firms such as Tableau and Qlik, which are both upping their games on data prep and data integration.”

Also today, Alteryx said it’s launching a new Marketplace where customers can discover Alteryx-verified third-party generative AI applications, as opposed to building their own from scratch.

“From staying ahead of the competition and expanding into new markets to increasing productivity, organizations are looking for new ways to win with generative AI,” said Alteryx Chief Product Officer Suresh Vittal. “With Alteryx AiDIN, we’re helping customers propel their organizations forward by making it easy for any user to responsibly use LLMs and generate outcomes that drive business growth and productivity.”

Besides the new AI Studio, Alteryx announced a new Playbooks feature with Alteryx AiDIN’s Auto Insights. Playbooks make it faster and easier to obtain insights from data by automating the initial steps of the analytics delivery process, including cade ideation, use case selection and development of proof-of-concept data stories. Users can simply input their role within the company, and Playbooks will suggest relevant analytics use cases they can explore and build, Alteryx said.

Image: Alteryx